Cyclone Catarina (2004)

Today the seventh tropical system ever recorded has formed in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It currently has the unintuitive name 90Q.Invest. It is currently off the coast of Brazil heading in an easterly direction so there is no threat to land. The storm - which may never have a real name - topped out at 40 MPH which would have lead to it receiving the status of Subtropical Storm in the North Atlantic. However, due to the rarity of tropical systems in this basin there is no naming system in place for storms. The only reason the Cyclone above got the name Catarina is due to the storm making landfall near Santa Catarina.

Brazilian Meteorologist are calling the storm a full fledged Tropical Cyclone while the National Hurricane Center and United States Naval Research Laboratory continue to refer to it as either a Subtropical Storm or Subtropical Depression.

Tropical storms are typically named in a manner such as this: ##B.NNNN. The ## would be the storm number, B would be the basin identifier, and NNNN would be the storms name.

The Number

The storm number is typically a number incremented for each storm that reaches depression strength. When a storm has yet to reach that strength then it is given a rotating number set between 90 and 99.

The Basin Identifier

To identify which basic the storm is in the system includes a single letter to mark this.

• L - North Atlantic Ocean
• W - Western North Pacific
• C - Central North Pacific
• E - Eastern North Pacific
• A - Arabian Sea
• B - Bay of Bengal
• S - South Indian Ocean
• P - South Pacific Ocean

The Name

The name is taken from a list of predefined names typically set up on a rotating basis. If the storm is in the preliminary stages of developing the name will be written as "INVEST", if the storm has reached tropical depression strength it will be listed as "NONAME" as a storm does not receive a name until it has reached tropical storm strength. As an example, the following is an example of the progression of Hurricane Katrina in the naming system: during the early formation of the storm it was known as 99L.INVEST, when it reached tropical depression strength it was given the name 12L.NONAME, and finally when it hit tropical storm status and given a name it was listed as 12L.KATRINA.

Since storms in this location are so rare they've never had a system set up to handle storms. Cyclone Catarina was given the designation 50L.NONAME as it would be very unlikely that basin would have 50 storms and this allowed them to place the storms information into their database. Since the number of storms in the south Atlantic seem to be on the rise they've given the basin the letter Q. So today for the first time we have a 90Q.INVEST.